Wasting your time with things I find interesting, amusing, or enraging. Reinke does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations

This is the great tragedy of living under leviathan. People have different ideas about how it ought to conduct its affairs. Who should be rewarded? Who should be punished? Who gets the privileges? Who must bear the cost? It becomes a war of pressure groups, everyone seeking to live at the expense of everyone else.

What is this thing we call government? It consists of the gang with an institutional structure that makes the rules, enforces the rules, and lives by rules that are different from those it imposes on the rest of the population. We can’t steal, but government can. We can’t kill, but government can. We can’t counterfeit, kidnap, and engage in fraud, but government can. This thing called government, obviously, has a strong interest in maintaining its power, prestige, and funding.

This is true no matter what the structure of the government happens to be. Oligarchy, absolute monarchy, constitutional monarchy, presidential republic, parliamentary republic, democracy — all of them have one thing in common: They create a special caste of citizens that live at the expense of everyone else.

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The essence of Libertarianism is that we need no such class.

Each man, and woman, of course, is their own sovereign.

Responsible to keep their word and a free to bind themselves in any way they see fit.

August 25, 2012GOP Acts To Prevent Another Paulian InsurgencyPosted by Lew Rockwell on August 25, 2012 08:37 AM

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LA Times:

The RNC laid the groundwork to change its rules in a maneuver that would effectively make it harder for a Paul-type candidate in future elections. A key committee voted to raise the number of states required to put a name in contention from five to eight, and to allow campaigns to select state delegates. The latter is a response to Paul’s campaign this year, which in some states was successful in working local and state party rules so their delegates are appearing in Tampa despite other candidates’ winning the states’ voting contests.

Of course, as it turns out–surprise!–a Paulian insurgency was already impossible, because the GOP will lie, cheat, steal, threaten, and bribe to prevent an opponent of the warfare state from coming to the fore. It all began when Ron won the Iowa straw poll, and the Republicans changed the votes to make him #2. Of course, the GOP is an arm of the lying, killng, looting state. Why would we expect anything else from these gangsters?

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The answer is that BOTH political parties are virtual clones of each other.

A viable third party has to form around: Sound money (like pre the FDR gold grab); Smaller Government (like the pre-War of Northern Aggression); and Peace through Strength (like Switzerland).